Hawaii 2016 Day 6-The Spartan Super and Earning the Trifecta

Well today is a monumental day. I have been blogging about the Spartan Trifecta for almost 2 years. For the first time not only did my phone not autocorrect "Trifecta" to "trident", it is actually now suggesting the word "trifecta" when I make a typo. 

Oh Samsung, it's like you finally understand who I really am!!

So Dave and I came out of Saturday with some pretty solid cuts, bruises, scrapes and sunburns. As hard as we tried to stay slathered in sunscreen there was no getting around the water, mud and sweat that kept washing it from our bodies.

We meant to get on course good and early on Sunday but I was tired and moving pretty slowly. Dave was feeling tip top. 

 We finally strolled out on to the Super course at around 9:30. I think the cut off time for completion was 6pm, so we were feeling pretty good about our chances.

 So good about them that we did take the liberty of grabbing some photos along the way. We left the phone in the bag for this one-so it's crap.

 Here we are climbing the 10 foot wall.

 That's not an easy thing to convince yourself to do on the third lap!!

 The spot where they filmed Jurassic Park. This is located directly in front of one of the longest ever barbed wire crawls I have needed to do (three effing times). My knees are torn beyond recognition from this one.

Nice views...

 Us being ridiculous. ..

 The location where they filmed Mighty Joe Young.

 And finally, 3 hours and 16 minutes later:

 We actually did it! I tuly didn't know that we could. I kept fearing that one of us would twist or break an ankle or something and we wouldnt make it.

We are both feeling incredibly proud. 

I knew I was in trouble on the walk back to the car (about a 3 km walk each way from the venue-I think there should be a medal just for the walk!) But I kept a brave face until we got to our accommodation. Then, unfortunately, I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening puking my guts out. It was just too much sun for this girl. 

If I EVER suggest that it would be a good idea to do something like this again, please slap me.

Hawaii 2016-Day Five-Spartan Day

The real reason that the Co Founders of the Snazarella family find themselves in Hawaii was to meet "in the middle" to do some races with some dear friends from Australia. So, last November,  when we were feeling very sad about leaving, Dave and I signed up to do a Spartan Trifecta in a weekend in Hawaii.

Mad right? Today was the day that we needed to put our bodies out there and do that which seemed so long ago to be a brilliant strategy.

We started with the Beast. It's the longest distance and is usually around 21k and we wanted it out of the way first. You can do the three races in any order you like over the 2 days.

In this photo we are still so blissfully unaware of what is ahead of us.

 True to Spartan form at 0.5km we went for a swim. So for the rest of 6.5 hours our socks and shoes were soaking wet. Classic.

 We are racing through Kualoa Ranch where Lost and Jurassic Park were filmed.

 The views wereally stunning. The obstacles were very difficult.

 Without question the hardest part of the Beast course was the time that we spent up in the mountain on sheer mud. Not deep mud, though there was lots of that too. This was mud so slick that if you were not holding on to a tree (many of them covered in thorns) you wouldn't be able to make any progress at all. We climbed up over this stuff, we climbed down over this stuff, we tried to walk on flat ground over this stuff. It was unrelenting. One of our kilometers up in that muck took almost 45 MINUTES.

There is video footage of me sliding down right off the path and only barely catching two tree roots on my way down to the valley below. (Don't tell my mom about that please).

Don't take my word for it though, just do a quick search around instagram and see all of the muscle bound athletes talking about how incredibly difficult this beast was.

We just kept taking it one step at a time.

 So yeah, it was fun! We ran the beast and just barely made it back in time to be allowed to get back on course to do the Sprint (7km) course.

We stopped for a quick selfie  (obligatory), changed some key clothing (for me it was my shoes and socks,

for Dave it was his shirt) and then strolled back out on to the course before the final call.

The Sprint felt like a walk in the park after that Beast. It covered the first and last 1/3 of the Beast course-no mud!! Some tough obstacles that we had already done but nothing sheer will and determination couldn't overcome.

Next thing you know, we had these puppies in our hands!

 Which meant THIS!

 So now, going in to tomorrow, we have done 2/3 of the races and have also covered 2/3 of the kilometres. I can live with that.

Spartan Double Trifecta-Done and Dusted!

Anna and I took about an hour to recover from doing the Spartan Super before suiting up in dry clothes and heading off for our Sprint. I had fully understood that the sprint would be around 6km.  You know that he Sprint course is some portion of the Super course. I just had not paid attention to which parts when I was doing the Super.  The answer is that it was most of the hard bits and a whole lot of the running bits!  My Garmin lost satellite reception a couple of times but still managed to teack over 7k of total distance!

 The pace and elevation stats make me laugh!  You run, stop for an obstacle,  run, stop, burpees. All par for the Spartan course!

 Yesterday's post discusses the Spartan 300 and that was featured at the end of the Sprint too.  Oh. My. Goodness. Was I ever tired coming in to it this time. The only part that was different was that the dumpsters that they were using for the ice baths had thawed and drained, so we didn't have that to cool us down this time through. 

In the end, done and dusted. Second trifecta earned (yes, there is a special medal just for that). Likely the first Canadian to earn two in Australia  (I have not yet confirmed that).  They even gave us a snazzy patch for having been stupid crazy enough to do two races in one day. 

Here is all of the race bling for my 2015 Australian Spartans.

 I'm pleased, but exhausted.

ANZ Stadium Spartan Super

This past weekend was the final two races of the second Spartan Trifecta that I have been working towards.  The races were in Sydney and Anna and I drove down the day before to help out and volunteer with setting up the course.

Anna hates selfies...hi Anna :)  We fueled up on pho the night before.

I ran both races with my phone in bag check turned off.  I did not take photos on course.  That said, here are a couple of photos and videos of other people to give you a good idea of what I got up to.  I'll take a look once the official photos are posted and see if I can do a follow up post with some shots of me in all of my sweaty glory mess.

The first race of the day was the Super distance.  This is a 12km race with plenty of obstacles.  As we were in the ANZ Olympic stadium, as opposed to an outdoor course, they didn't have any mud or barbed wires.  Instead, we ran all through the stadium including lots of time in the bleachers.  We ran through the VIP boxes, the private staff only areas, the changerooms and even out on to the field and grass.  We ran up and down the ramps and through the parking garage-usually with slam balls or sandbags on board.  

The the climbing happened.  Oh the climbing.  They started with a ski erg machine.  I had to go 200m in 60 seconds.  I smashed it, but my shoulders were tired and my hands were sweaty.  Of course, this was the very next obstacle!  Ugh.

I got most of the way up and then suddenly, I was falling.  Arrggg!  I fell about 3 meters down on to thin mats landing on my back and head.  I got up pretty quickly and kept moving (I would later realize I damaged my head and tailbone, but not for a few hours yet!)  

The next section of the race is right before the finish line.  It is called the Spartan 300 and it is intense!  Here is an aerial shot.  In here there is a whole mash up of things like a log jump, a Hercules hoist, cargo nets galore, wall ball, a crazy hard travers rope with a climb in the middle (oh my shoulders!!) and more...so much more. 

 Here is a lego video version of it in case you are interested:

This is the single most hateful rope traverse I have ever done.  I completed it though. Once you put that much work in to something there is no way that you are willing to fail it and do burpees!

This is the Cliffhanger. It looks really horrifying, but is actually not as bad as it looks.  I nailed it both times. I finished in just over 2 hours and I was pretty battered.

Here are the 5 race medals and 5 pie pieces earned up to this point.  

So, So, SOOOOO very close to having that 6th and final pie piece!!!.

A follow up Post to the Melbourne Beast Spartan

As promised I am (finally) looking to see if there are photos of me on the course of the Beast.  I am actually finding some this time around-yay!  They are thumbnails, so not the best quality, but here I am:

Start line:

Run up to the fire jump:

 Fire Jump:

Mud Crawl (under rope, not barbed wire):

Part of me heading up the yucky hill.  I am climbing to the top so that I can grab one of those sandbags you see in the photos and then run to the bottom to grab a trinket to prove I did it, and then climb back up.  As you do.

 Here I am with the sandbag!

 We are working hard!  The next photos show that.

I still have not found any photos of me under the barbed wire crawl-but I remember seeing the photographer.  I will take another look and see if I can find them.